That’s nice of you @Marian to spot your children the money. This thread is about students who don’t have help from home and are therefore hungry.
I said my daughter needed to figure it out and she did. I told her to, and showed her how to, save money from the prior semester, from the summer, by being thrifty to get through those first few weeks of every semester. She actually has more money than I do but couldn’t just spend it and expect there to be more. I have paid for her travel, but again this thread was about student who don’t have that luxury and whether the schools should do more for the students. I do think the schools should get the extra financial aid to the students as quickly as possible so students can get their books and supplies and pay the rent and eat. My daughter’s school is very (very) bad about that but we knew that after the first year and planned for it. Some don’t have the luxury of planning for a late check.
I would have had her stay in the dorm if she couldn’t come up with the money for a rental. If she had done that, she wouldn’t have needed to come up with rent in advance (in fact had to pay for June and July when she didn’t live there). I don’t think schools have to accommodate every choice their students make. If the school provides dorms and meal plans and includes a reasonable amount for travel in the COA but the student chooses to live off campus and doesn’t like the food and wants a car on campus to travel whenever he wants, that’s on the student and not the school.
“Without some discipline of failure, people just don’t learn.”
I’m not so sure. I’ve seen many people lead successful lives – where success is defined as responsible adulthood – despite having had a safety net under them.
This is an eye-opening article, and accompanying anecdotes from fellow posters, for posters who have never had to live without a basic need being met. I know I always assumed financial aid would cover whatever a student could need, in terms of school books and full meal plans, and that the biggest challenge for a poor student would be not being able to do to the “extra” things their classmates take for granted— dinner out at a fancy local restaurant, a day of skiing, a spring break trip.
I never realized that financial aid would be insufficient at ‘meets full need’ elite schools, nor that financial aid students could opt out of meal plans or “choose” to send some of their aid money (campus job, etc.) home to help their families. So sad in a country where so many people have so much money and comfort.
My daughter finds many ways to barter or make money at school. At an elite university the student population often has $$. Tutoring, distributing a product at a fair on campus, doing a lazy student’s laundry, working in a lab which doubles as a resume builder. It all adds up…
@amNotarobot Except I have no intention of dropping out. I have every intention of surviving (at least until graduation in a couple of months) and I have no love interests because gay men my age are not into their counterparts unless they’re white or have washboard abs.
Article revolves around a 44 yo non traditional student at Emerson (not an “elite”). For the elite, they cite an MIT survey where 1 in 10 students answered they “go to bed hungry.” But you can’t infer that’s because they didn’t have access to food. Many kids avoid eating late at night even if hungry due to dieting.
I’d be 1 of the 10 back in college because I’d cram late at night and not bother eating. Or after a party you pass out before eating. Did I sometimes go to bed hungry? Sure. Did I go to bed hungry because I didn’t have access to food? No. Food was everywhere. Even good food is easy to come by if you just look up club/career/guest speaker events, which always offer some sort of free food spread.
You can’t blame the college if kids pocket their food allowance $ then complain later.
I’ve noticed that students (and perhaps most people in general) are more likely to complain about things that are not actual issues for them. For example, the pre med student who just “could not get more than 2 hours of sleep” because they had to study for an exam last minute can commiserate about that with other college students, but the student who got 2 hours of sleep because of a sleep disorder is less likely to openly complain about it because it’s so personal.
Most of the people I know who claim to not have enough money for food spend money on non-necessities, but perhaps the people who actually don’t have enough money for food are less likely to complain about it. This would contribute to the perception of hungry students as whiny or not resourceful enough.
These food insecure kids are not blaming the college. They tend to be incredibly grateful for everything the colleges do for them. They tend to be very resourceful, and not at all whiny. Especially at the elite colleges/universities.
Anyone who truly sees food insecure people as “whiny” does not understand food insecurity.
Many of these kids understand precisely why they are among the food insecure, because of conscious decisions to prioritize other family obligations. They have become adept at finding temporary solutions, but in many cases they don’t always realize the disadvantage they put themselves in academically. After working their part time jobs and sending their paychecks home, they occasionally have to spend the mental energy worrying where their next meal(s) are coming from. This isn’t an everyday problem for all students, but more likely an occasional but recurring concern.
Freshmen tend to have the biggest problem handling this, because of the culture shock, and the solutions are not always well advertised, but students in all years are affected.
Food insecurity is a much bigger problem in our society than most people can even begin understand. Many people won’t even try to understand it, because it’s easier to dismiss the problem and/or blame the victims. After all, that lets us rationalize our own sometimes insensitive behavior by not doing anything about it.
@violetstar “go to bed hungry” is a term of art. It doesn’t literally mean going to bed without having a full stomach. It connotes not being able to eat even if they wanted to. So yes, a dieter may technically go to bed hungry. But they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) say that they “go to bed hungry” because they should know what that phrase actually means.
I’m a dieter, and I would like to use the terminology correctly. If the restrictions of my diet mean that I feel hungry when I go to bed tonight (an experience I have frequently and one that often keeps me awake all night), how should I describe the situation?
“Go to bed hungry” in this context means, “can’t afford food.”
The fact that you’d tell your buddies “I went to be hungry last night” doesn’t change the fact that, when a government or scientific survey asks if you “go to bed hungry” they are basically asking if you can afford food.
We added a homeless option to @NSSEsurvey living situation item this year. The data is very preliminary, but we are showing about .2% identifying as homeless a month into data collection.
We are a middle class family and my oldest (now a senior at University of Maryland) went hungry at UMD for his first 2 years until they realized their students were going hungry and changed their food plan from “pay per item” to “pay per an all you can eat meal” the main reason he went hungry for the second half of every semester was because he is a really big guy. Not obese, probably not even overweight, but 6"4 and stocky. Even though we had bought a larger amount of points per semester for him, he just requires a lot of calories. He would eat normally for the first half of the semester then starve the last half. Since he knew my husband and I were really stretching the budget just to send him there , he wouldnt ask for money. (Part of this may be our fault since freshman year we already felt we were spending such a huge amount on the food plan that when he would run out of points we would scold him for not spending them properly, but when my husband and I went to college we had all-you -eat cafeterias where we ate until we werent hungry and didn’t over indulge) he got a part time job and we would always wonder why he didnt have money, but it was because he was surviving off the McDonalds $1 menu and ramen for the second half of every semester. Which caused him to gain weight and become obese, which required him to need more calories…it was a vicious cycle. He also was allowed 1 all you can eat meal a week at a certain dining hall in his plan and he and his friends would go around lunch time, study there and eat for hours because it was their only time in the week to actually have access to unlimited food. SO they over indulged and that was another bad cycle that started. UMD changed to each swipe of the meal card was one meal. Since they are now all you can eat per meal, they reduced portion sizes (to normal sizes) to reduce waste (but a kid like my son can still take 2 small slices of pizza for the same price) they stopped carry out (another bad thing for college kids - they would take their food back to their dorms and eat in front of their computers with no socialization at all) they also greatly extended dining hall hours - which was another problem because when he was a freshman, he would get hungry in the evening and there would be no option for him to eat since he didnt have a car. So he would gorge at his dinner meal as he became afraid of being hungry later in the evening (dwindling his dining points and again gaining weight) - when if he just had an apple or two available to him as he did at home he would have been fine in the evening. Since the meal plan change, he has lost 70 pounds in 2 years and is never hungry. This also took some counseling to get to the bottom of his drastic weight gain and awareness of what his daily calorie and carb intake should be. UMD figured this problem out and all colleges and universities should look to them to adjust their food plans.
How normal is the kids don’t have enough money for food because they spend in alcohol?
Just a question, I never lived in a dorm? But I when I was young, me and my friends sometimes don’t have for food, but friday and Saturday always get money for beer.
The examples in the survey were not about kids spending it on alcohol!
What happens is the low-income students’ financial aid is set to be “just enough” – there’s no room in the budget for luxury, but more importantly there is no room in the budget for when “life happens” or when a bill is due before the financial aid check is available. Because the budget is so tight, kids almost have to cut back in food as it’s their only weekly discretionary spending.
The kids were answering an anonymous survey about their experiences. They weren’t complaining or asking for handouts. In fact, not wanting to ask for more help is part of the reason they were skipping meals.